


Legacy

by MaverickQ



Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:33:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 3,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24345817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaverickQ/pseuds/MaverickQ
Summary: This is basically my take on Homestuck 2 more or less.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	1. Prologue 1

The game was over. They’d won. They could finally claim the Ultimate Reward. They used the genetic tech they had to create a bunch of human clones, and Kanaya left the Mother Grub egg in the capable carapacian hands of the Mayor and his new white chess-lady friend; then they used Dave’s time-travel powers (which ended up being the last time he would use them for a long time.) to fast-forward to the future, leaving the little civilization they had jump-started to grow and develop as it would.  
They hadn’t really expected all the fanfare they’d received when they got back, though I suppose they probably should have. As Dave so eloquently put it, “We’re basically the second coming that Jesus never had.”  
It was surprisingly easy. Settling into their new lives on this planet that, while they may have created it, was wholly unfamiliar to them. In between learning about the ways that trolls, humans, carapacians and all of the other myriad creatures that they had dumped onto the planet had learned to coexist with one another over the centuries, life happened.  
Kanaya and Rose got married of course (resulting in an ill-advised celebratory indulgence in Tricksterdom). After spending some time apart, Dirk and Jake managed to work things out some kind of way. No one that wasn’t them really understood, but they seemed happy. Dave and Karkat started cohabitating immediately after the game had ended, both of them had gotten rings but were waiting for the right time to ask (they would end up asking at almost the exact same moment during their anniversary a few years down the road. It was a scene that would put all of Karkat’s rom-coms combined to shame).  
There were a few curveballs that came down the road though; for one John and Terezi (in-between her searching space for Vriska) got together. After he found out, Karkat went on record as saying that he was not touching that with a 10ft pole. That wasn’t the biggest surprise though, the biggest surprise was Roxy, Jane and Calliope announcing that they were datemates. Once again no one else seemed to know what to make of it, but so long as all parties involved were happy, everyone was pretty much content to leave it at that.  
Life happened, for a while anyway. Terezi routinely searched their man-made cosmos for Vriska, coming back to Earth-C only once in a while to catch up with everyone and antagonize John. The Strilondes and the Croharlengberts had their weekly get-togethers, while the few Alternians that were left went and did their own thing (Calliope tended to bounce from group to group each week since no one wanted to leave her out), and everyone all got together at least once a month. It was at one of these get-togethers that a certain announcement was made that would change everything.


	2. Prologue 2

“Wait, what?” After uttering that single sentence, Dave stared at his ecto-sister; slack-jawed and for once, speechless.   
Rose, unperturbed by Dave’s reaction, repeated her announcement. “Me and Kanaya have decided to have a child together.” Breezy. Calm. As if she hadn’t just dropped a fucking conversational bomb right there on the picnic table.   
Before Dave could react, Jade jumped in and proceeded to hug-strangle Rose. “Ohmigosh that’s so great you guys! I can’t wait to see how cute mini-you will be!”  
“Yeah, and I can’t wait to be a grandmaunt!” Roxy piped in with a grin. Even Dirk gave them an upward tilt of the lips and an approving nod. As everyone began to converge on the happy couple, chattering excitedly, Dave just sat there staring down… processing.


	3. Prologue 3

See, the thing was, it wasn’t impossible for Rose and Kanaya to have a kid together. When they had time-skipped to thousands of years in the future, lots of shit went down in their troll-human-carapacian civilization during the interim.   
Either Earth C humans and trolls just had a genetic predisposition for it given their ancestors/creators, or it was simply impossible for two sentient species to inhabit the same (relatively) limited space without at least entertaining the thought, but it wasn’t long before trolls and humans began indulging in romantic inclinations with one another.   
And since humans (regardless of their genetic ancestry) for whatever reason were predisposed to forming family groups with their chosen mate, which at some point or another usually involved a child, it also didn’t take very long before human-troll couples started adopting and raising human babies and/or troll grubs together.  
Then one day a troll scientist (who btw had 2 human life-partners) got to thinking: hey, wouldn’t it be cool if trolls and humans could conceive a child together? One that was genetically related to both their troll and human parent? So, Dr. Ashtor was given permission to study the ancient biogenetic technology left behind by their creators (in other words, the slime-cloning tech that the kids didn’t know what to do with after they were done with it so they just kinda left it there) and used what he learned to create an artificial womb.   
Apparently, when you got right down to the DNA, humans and trolls weren’t all that different. So, making troll DNA and human DNA genetically compatible was actually the easy part. The hard part was figuring out how to create an environment that would be able to support the development of the fetus. Every hybrid was different; sometimes the embryo would develop into a fetus resulting in a live birth, while with others, the genetic material used to combine them required an egg, an empty vessel in order to grow. On top of that, there was no way to know how it was gonna turn out beforehand, which meant that neither of the usual methods of procreation could be utilized.  
You couldn’t have the human partner artificially inseminated in case the embryo needed an egg, and you couldn’t deposit the genetic material in a Mother Grub, in case it developed into a live fetus. What Dr. Ashtor needed to do was to develop a kind of incubator that could monitor the embryo and its development and create a suitable environment for it accordingly. This actually ended up being the trickier part of Dr. Ashtor’s self-assigned project, but with time, he figured it out; and so it was that troll/human hybrids were brought into the world.


	4. Prologue 4

Karkat was worried. Ever since the picnic yesterday, Dave had been unusually quiet. He seemed to be thinking deeply about something since on more than one occasion when Karkat was speaking to him, Dave would suddenly startle, apologize and ask what he had been talking about. After five days of this, Karkat finally decided to put his foot down.  
“Dave.” Karkat said, visibly startling him for the tenth time that week.  
“Shit-yeah, sorry Kat. What were you saying again?”  
After an awkward pause, Karkat said “Nothing. I had just started talking.”  
Dave blinked. “Oh uh, cool ok. Then what’s up Kitkat?”  
Karkat sighed. Deciding to let the stupid nicknames go for now, he said “Ever since the picnic you’ve been acting more than your usual level of weird Dave.”  
“Psh. What?” Dave said unconvincingly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about Kittykat. I’m just as cool as usual bro. Cool as a creamsicle on a grueling winter’s day in-”  
“Dave.” Karkat interrupted, before Dave could continue with his incredibly drawn-out metaphor to illustrate how very cool he currently was. “This is the most you’ve spoken all week. I know that when you go for an extended period of time without word-vomiting everything that’s in your thinkpan at any given moment in time, something’s wrong. So instead of poorly pretending that something hasn’t been bothering you for the past several days, you can just tell me what’s wrong and we can go from there.”  
For a moment, Dave just sat there in silence; then, with a slight smile he asked “Damn Karkles, when did you become the mature one in this relationship?”  
“I always have been, dumbass. Now tell me what it is exactly that crawled up your nook and died.”  
Dave snorted and then took a moment to collect his thoughts. “So like,” he began “You remember what Rose and Kanaya said they were going to do at the picnic the other day?”   
“What? Raising a grub?” Karkat asked. “Yeah it’d be kinda hard to forget. Especially since when the kid does get here I imagine I’ll have to be in close proximity to it whenever I want to go visit my moirail.”  
“Yeah. So, the thing is I never thought that any of us could or would even want to be a parent one day. Except for maybe John, cause I mean he’s practically a goofy, stereotypical dad already; but especially not Rose and me. I mean, out of the four of us, we probably had the worst examples of parental guidance and that’s including Jade and her stuffed grandad. I mean, at least she had a decent example to follow growing up learning all about Alt-Jake’s heroic past deeds.  
So, when it comes to kids, like I never even considered that that could be a possibility or you know, an option, for me.” Dave paused, rubbing the back of his head. They were both very quiet for a moment.  
“Dave.” Karkat said, breaking the silence. “Do you want to have kids?”

“That’s the thing, I don’t know!” Dave exclaimed, frustration bleeding through his words. “There’s a part of me that’s thinking ‘well if she can do it, why can’t I?’ and it’s not like during the few times I’ve been around kids or babies I hated the experience. It was actually kind of fun; but then I get to thinking ‘what if I fuck this kid up the way Bro fucked me up? Is having a kid really worth taking that risk?’ and I can’t answer that because it’s like I said, I’ve never thought about it before!”   
It was at this point that Karkat reached out to calm Dave. Gently pulling his head down into his lap and petting his hair comfortingly. They spent some time in that position until it seemed like Dave had calmed down, which is when Karkat decided to speak. “I’m not gonna lie to you Dave. The thought of being some grub’s lusus is completely insane to me.” Dave tensed. “But,” Karkat continued. “I can also say the same for a lot of human customs; like homosexuality vs heterosexuality, being raised by an adult of your species at all, your species entire concept of romance. Yet, here I am in a relationship with a human that repeatedly defies quadrants and a few days ago, my moirail who also happens to be in a similar relationship with a human told me that she was going to raise a half-human half-troll baby with said human and I didn’t even bat an eye. I guess what I’m trying to say is,” Karkat continued, “I just want you to be happy and, I want you to know that whatever you decide to do, whether that’s having a kid or not having a kid, I’ll support you, no matter what.”  
After he finished his speech, Karkat could feel Dave finally start to relax. “Thanks Kat.” He mumbled into Karkat’s lap. Karkat smiled, and they stayed like that for the rest of the evening.


	5. Prologue 5

12-15 months later, Rose and Kanaya welcome their little bundles of joy into the world. There was some dispute over whether or not little Karina and Regina qualified as twins, since although they took both of them home on the same day, Karina was still an egg at the time. It was at the get-together to celebrate the birth of the twins and for them to get to know all their ambiguous relations and family friends, as Dave held his niece in his arms, he decided to tell his ecto-sis the good news that he and Karkat had finally officially decided on recently.   
Afterwards, Rose smiled and said “I’m sure the twins will love to have a little cousin to play with. Were you planning on telling anyone else today?”   
Dave was about to answer when Jade loudly announced to the room that she was going to try her hand at this whole baby thing too. As everyone quickly began to swarm Jade with questions(all except for Karkat who looked at a loss) Dave turned to Rose with one eyebrow raised and a slight smirk and said “Nah. Wouldn’t want to steal Jade’s thunder. It can wait.” In the end, the two of them ended up making the announcement over the group chat.


	6. Prologue 5 1/2

Not long after this, Ruby was brought home by her parents to be hatched and things were going well. The proud new parents were considering taking Ruby over to her aunt’s house to visit when Dave received an urgent message from John for both he and Karkat to come over to his house. NOW. Upon arriving at John’s place they found Rose and Kanaya there too, waiting outside. Apparently they had received the same message. Once they were let into the house it soon became apparent why.  
“Okay Egbert. Explain to me again how in the FUCK this happened.” Karkat said, holding a wriggling infant. Were it not for the fact that the child clearly had flesh arms and legs, despite being in its infancy, Karkat would’ve been certain that it was a troll. It had gray skin, horns, black lips and hair and orange eyes that would most likely change to match the distinctly teal color of its veins once it reached physical maturity.  
“It was an accident!” John said.  
“That’s literally impossible dude.” Dave said flatly. It was true. There was no way for a human and a troll to reproduce together that wasn’t 100% intentional.   
“Ok, not an accident but, I certainly didn’t have anything to do with it!” John clarified. “Last night Terezi just showed up with him saying that he was our kid and that she was gonna leave him with me since raising grubs seemed like more of a human thing.”  
“If Terezi truly did have this child without consulting you beforehand, then how did she manage to obtain a sample of your genetic material without you noticing?” Kanaya asked.  
“Please GOD do not answer that.” Karkat interrupted. John closed his previously open mouth, a blush on his face.  
“The method with which he was conceived is irrelevant.” Rose said, speaking for the first time since they got to John’s house. “The fact is he’s here now, and he’s clearly yours, unless you’d like to perform a DNA test to confirm?” Rose asked, a single eyebrow raised as she inclined her head towards John.  
John paused, appearing to think about it. Finally he said “No. I don’t think Terezi would go this far just for the sake of a joke. I think she was telling the truth. That- he really is my kid.”   
Rose hummed her agreement. “In that case, what do you want to do about it?”  
“What do you mean?” John asked, looking confused.  
“Well, Terezi clearly doesn’t intend to deal with the responsibility of raising this child-”  
“Yeah, what the fuck is up with that?” Karkat asked. “Why would she go to the trouble of going behind your back to have this kid, and then all of a sudden dump him on you?”  
John shrugged. “I don’t know man. When I asked, all she said was that it was important, and then when I asked how she knew that, she said it was a Seer thing; then she took off.”  
This prompted everyone to turn and look at Rose, the Seer currently in the room. She bit her lip, her normally enigmatic expression replaced with one that looked troubled. “Rose?” Kanaya prompted gently. “Do you know what Terezi meant?”  
A long pause. Rose looked conflicted before her shoulders went slack and she sighed. “Lately I’ve been sensing something on the horizon. I haven’t been able to tell exactly what it is, other than it’s not for awhile yet, and that it’s something… well, important.” She glanced at the twins, who were both sleeping peacefully in their stroller. “I didn’t think it had anything to do with the children… or I hoped, rather.”  
There was a pause as everyone took a moment to process this information. Looking over at Karkat, John seemed to come to some kind of resolve, and walked over to him in order to gently take the squirming child from his arms. The child seemed to sense that he was now in his father’s arms, as he gave a trilling purr once John had him settled. Upon closer inspection, despite his trollish features the kid really did have an uncanny resemblance to his dad. “Well, I guess if I’m gonna be taking care of the little guy, I should probably give him a name huh? What do you guys think?”


	7. Prologue 6

After Josh (that was the name that was eventually decided on after much heated debate) then came Jade’s daughter, June. She had such a strong resemblance to Jade that Dave felt the need to ask if she just cloned a baby version of herself. “Of course not!” Jade said, shuddering. “That’d be so weird! No, when I went to the nursery I asked for an anonymous donor. I don’t even know who it was.”  
After June there was a bit of a lull, but it didn’t take long for the seemingly out of nowhere baby fever to overtake the rest of the group. Just as Dave and Karkat were announcing their intention to have a little brother or sister for Ruby, Jake and Dirk announced that they were planning on having a kid of their own; and so, Rory (Dave and Karkat’s) and twin boys (human babies so there was no disputing the fact that they were twins) Dean and Jace, were brought into the world.  
So, naturally Jane, Calliope, and Roxy had to follow suit. First they had a little boy called Jack (when asked about it, Jane simply said “I don’t care about anyone who used to be referred to as Jack. I’ve had that name picked out since I was 14, and I’m gosh darn well going to use it, thank you very much!” The subject was never brought up again) followed by another pair of twin boys (seriously what was with their genetics and twins?) Callen and Reid. Before them however, there was one child that was born that no one found out about until it was much too late.


	8. Prologue 7

Dave stared. The child stared back, unblinking. This is the scene Karkat found when he walked up behind Dave to ask who was at the door.   
Assessing the situation, Karkat realized that Dave was going to be no help, having just woken up, and crouched down so that he was eye-level with the kid to ask them what was going on.   
Using a tone that, while it wasn’t quite gentle, was low enough that it generally didn’t immediately startle grubs and children like his regular tone of voice tended to, he asked “Hey there. What’s your name?” Silence. “Are you okay? Where are your guardians?” The child looked conflicted, before frantically making gestures with their hands. Realizing that the child must not be able to talk for whatever reason, Karkat studied the gestures they were making. It looked like they were using a pen with one hand and using their other hand as a notepad?   
Karkat sighed, and rising from his crouch, went to fetch a notebook and a pencil. He came back and handed the requested items to the child, who began to scribble furiously for a moment, then flipped the notebook to show Karkat what they had written.   
“Morgan.” Karkat read. “Is that your name?” The child nodded and quickly wrote down another sentence.   
My Dad said you would take care of me.  
“Who’s your dad?” Karkat asked his eyebrows furrowing in concern. Did someone seriously leave a kid on their doorstep in the hopes that whoever lived there would take care of their kid? What the fuck? Their society had plenty of safety nets for this sort of thing, so why not just take them to get assigned to a carapacian? Seemingly in answer to his questions, both verbal and internal, the child lifted up their wrist for Karkat’s inspection. His eyes widened, because the kid’s veins were a deep, unmistakable shade of purple.  
Oh fuck.


End file.
